What are the most important jobs in your city/town?

  Even with that caveat, it’s still a vague concept. For instance, let’s look at the first entry on your poll. When I’m driving the streets and highways here, the utter lack of enforcement of traffic laws is glaringly apparent in that speeding, dangerous lane changes, tailgating, running of red lights and stop signs, etc. either happen way too often because of few officers on scene and pulling over the offenders, or happen way too often because there are so few officers available to enforce the laws, thereby encouraging ne’er-do-wells to do as they please.  As such, police officers are or would be extremely important if they were more plentiful, more present, more effective, and more proactive. On the other hand, police officers can also be seen as the most important entity based on the enforcement that they do carry out regardless of the fact that they are stretched so thin and do what they can when they can, making them deserving of admiration. So that leaves a multi-faceted way to look at just one entry on the poll, and that’s before even comparing it to any of the other entries, to include k, which gives the opportunity to name countless other possibilities. 

  The second entry, firefighters (single compound word, no space, no not a two-word phrase in this particular context).  They’re also extremely important, their presence, training, readiness, knowledge, abilities, image, etc. can hardly be ignored. Yet, I rarely give them a thought at all. It’s usually until or unless they’re needed in an emergency that the average person gives them a thought at all. Does that make them any less important? Does it diminish their importance? Does it make them less important than the others in the poll choices? When I’m waiting for a piece of mail that‘s highly relevant to me at the moment, I might not be thinking of police officers or firefighters at that particular moment. If a home-invasion robber and an arsonist burst into my home while I’m waiting for the letter, as the zip ties are being tightened around my wrists and ankles and the duct tape seals my mouth shut, and as the liquid propellant is being doused indiscriminately around the abode, the postal employee drops a notch or two in my perception of hierarchy and the cop and bombero advance on the list. 

~

  And none of the others cover a lot of territory?
~